Chief UN Weapons Inspector Calls Iraq War Illegal

The war against Iraq is illegal, said Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat who supervised United Nations inspectors that, prior to the war, scoured the country in a search for weapons of mass destruction.

High-ranking U.S. and British officials made repeated allegations that Iraq possessed banned weapons of mass destruction. However, extensive searches by UN weapons inspectors prior to the war and by U.S. inspection teams, after the war, failed to find a single banned weapon in Iraq. "They believed the intelligence rather than the inspectors and unfortunately the inspectors were right,' Blix said. "There was not sufficient critical thinking. I even go so far as to say it was like a witch-hunt."

The intelligence that was used by the U.S. and British governments to justify the war against Iraq turned out to be wrong, Blix said. "They were so convinced that there were witches in Iraq that every black cat became proof of it," he said. "The tendency was to view any evidence in a more serious light than was the reality.

"There should have been a bit more patience," Blix said. "If the inspections had gone on for a couple more months, then I think Blair and others would have realized that many pieces of intelligence which they relied upon were not valid."

Britain's former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of "gross misuse" of the intelligence services in order to wage war against Iraq. "It is now clear that he took Britain into war on a false prospectus, and the Iraq war will, rightly, haunt Blair for the rest of his premiership," Rifkind wrote in the Independent (U.K.).

Under the Independent's March 5 headline "Iraq war was illegal," Blix said, "I don't buy the argument the war was legalized by the Iraqi violation of earlier resolutions." According to Blix, an international lawyer and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the "ownership" of the UN resolutions pertaining to Iraq rested with the entire 15-member Security Council, and not with individual states. "The Security Council could have authorized it, but I do not think it was right for individual members to do so," said Blix.

Security Council Resolution 1441, passed in November 2002, required the regime of Saddam Hussein to comply with UN weapons inspectors but made clear that no further action could be taken without the approval of the UN. Iraq had complied with UN weapons inspectors prior to being invaded by U.S. and British forces. Before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq last March, Blix and Mohamed El Baradei, head of the IAEA, said that in four months of searching, they had found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction or programs to build them. Blix and El Baradei told the Security Council that more time was needed to make a definitive conclusion.

The British government knew that a second resolution was necessary to justify the planned invasion. A memo from Britain's Foreign Office to the Foreign affairs Select Committee on March 17, 2003, "made clear that there was no ‘automaticity' in Resolution 1441 to justify war."

In Blix's recently published book, Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Blix describes how on March 6, 2003, the day before his final report to the Security Council, U.S. Assistant secretary of State John Wolf "tossed photographs of a drone and a cluster bomb on my table" and "in a rather discourteous tone" asked why Blix did not conclude that the photographs were evidence that Iraq was in violation of Security Council resolutions.

Blix told the press that he suspected that his UN office and home in New York had been bugged. The photographs that Wolf had were obtained through an intelligence agency, he said. "He should not have had them," Blix said. "I asked him how he got them, and he would not tell me, and I said I resented that.

"It could have been some staff belonging to us that handed them to the Americans. I don't think it is very likely, but it could have happened," Blix said. "It could also be that they managed to break into the secure fax and got it that way." Both the drone and the cluster bomb had been examined by UN inspectors and determined to be inconclusive or "scrap from the past," Blix wrote.

Jafar Dhia Jafar, the "father of Iraq's nuclear program," spoke publicly for the first time about Iraqi weapons programs on March 8 in Beirut. Jafar said UN inspectors had "reached total conviction" that Iraq was free of nuclear weapons. Pressure from the U.S. government, however, prevented Blix from being more forthright with the Security Council, Jafar said.

"Reports of the United Nations inspectors to the Security Council should have been clear and courageous," the Iraqi scientist said. Jafar presented a paper co-written with Noman Saad Eddin al-Noami, the former director-general of Iraq's nuclear program, at a three-day conference on the repercussions of the invasion of Iraq organized by the Beirut-based Center for Arab Unity Studies.

"Saddam Hussein issued orders in July 1991 for the destruction of all banned weapons, in addition to the systems to produce them. It was carried out by the Special Republican Guard forces." the Iraqi scientists wrote. "We can confirm with absolute certainty that Iraq no longer possessed any weapons of mass destruction after its unilateral destruction of all its components in the summer of 1991, and did not resume any such activity because it no longer had the foundations to resume such activity," they wrote.

Media Admits Failing Public on Iraq War Coverage

March 30, 2004

A year into what has become a very grim occupation, a chorus of senior journalists are now saying that the mainstream media “failed the American public” with its uncritical acceptance of the administration’s dubious claims about the need to invade Iraq.

“This has been the most shameful era of American media. The media has been sucker-punched completely by this administration,” Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times said recently about how the mainstream media had covered the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Sheer, a visiting professor at University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, made his comments on March 18 during a conference about the media’s role in the war in Iraq.

Berkeley’s school of journalism co-sponsored the three-day Media at War conference. The conference brought together dozens of international correspondents, journalists, editors, and directors of mainstream media outlets. Key personalities in the run-up to the war, such as Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector, and Joseph C. Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, also participated in the conference.

INFORMATION WARFARE

Speaking for the military, Lt. Col. Richard Long, former Public Information Director for the U.S. Marine Corps, spoke about why the military had decided to embed journalists with military units in the field. “Frankly, our job is to win the war,” Long said. “Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment.”

Long, as head of media relations for the Marine Corps, managed the media boot camp in Quantico, Virginia, where more than 700 journalists were prepared for their war assignments. “Overall,” Long said, “we were very happy with the outcome.”

Todd Gitlin, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, said, “Embeddedness has a built-in swerve toward propaganda…because an embedded reporter is on a team.” Because his life depends on the soldiers with whom he is embedded, Gitlin said the journalist’s desire to write negative stories is “quite diminished.”

John Burns, the New York Times bureau chief, called in from Baghdad, where images and reports of the grim reality of the occupation are filtered before being published. Burns said: “We failed the American public by being insufficiently critical about elements of the administration’s plan to go to war.”

Maher Abdallah Ahmad of the Arab television network Al Jazeera said, “The Americans still do not know what is happening in Iraq. Does anyone here know how many Iraqis were killed in the war?” Ahmad asked. “You make all these efforts to establish a democracy, and you don’t give a damn how many people were killed?”

Federico Rampini, U.S. correspondent for Italy’s La Republica newspaper said he was amazed that American journalists have not investigated more deeply Vice President Dick Cheney’s role in the Halliburton scandal. In Italy, Rampini said, such a story “would have been on the front page for months.”

While the leading U.S. news organizations are now rushing to expose the Bush administration’s pre-war deceptions on the need to invade Iraq, Michael Massing, in his article “Now They Tell Us” in the New York Review of Books, wrote: “Where were you all before the war? Why didn’t we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change – when, in short, it might have made a difference?”

Massing points out that Judith Miller of the Times wrote several front-page articles before the war about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) based on faulty information provided by Iraqi defectors of dubious credibility. In an e-mail to Burns, Miller wrote that Ahmed Chalabi, the indicted bank embezzler and head of the exile Iraqi National Congress, “has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper.”

“Not until September 29, 2003,” Massing wrote, “did the New York Times get around to informing readers about the controversy over Chalabi and the defectors associated with him.” More than 6 months into the war and with no evidence of the alleged Iraqi WMD anywhere to be found, Douglas Jehl reported that most of the information provided by Chalabi and his defectors had been judged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as being “of little or no value.”

“The press was in a good position to educate the public on the administration’s justifications for war,” Massing wrote, “Yet for the most part, it never did so. The performance of the Times was especially deficient,” Massing wrote. “Compared to other major papers, the Times placed more credence in defectors, expressed less confidence in inspectors, and paid less attention to dissenters.”

When Massing asked Miller why she had not included more comments in her stories from experts who contested the assertions made by Iraqi defectors and the White House, she said: “My job isn’t to assess the government’s information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of the New York Times what the government thought about Iraq’s arsenal.”

“But even a cub reporter should know that if the government tells her the sky is blue, it’s her job to check whether it might not be red or gray or black,” Rich Mercier of the Free Lance–Star of Fredericksburg, Va. wrote on March 28. “And skepticism must be exercised most strongly when the matter at hand is whether the nation will go to war.

“By neglecting to fully employ their critical-thinking faculties, Miller and many of her colleagues in the elite print media not only failed their readers during the countdown to the Iraq invasion, they failed our democracy,” Mercier wrote, “And there’s no excusing that failure.”

As a leading opinion-setting newspaper, the Times set a pro-war tone on Iraq that many other papers followed. Massing concluded that the “pack mentality” is “one of the most entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism.”

Is Israeli Intelligence Behind Terrorism in America?

May 28, 2004

The "war on terror" has a glaring blind spot that puts the security of the United States at grave risk. While innocent Iraqis are being tortured in their homeland, suspicious criminal activity by Israeli military agents near sensitive nuclear sites in the United States is neither investigated - nor reported. The most damning criticism of the "war on terror" is that it actually creates more terror. Some critics would argue that the increase in terror and instability is intentional - part of a larger geopolitical plan to control the Middle East and Caspian Basin regions and their valuable mineral resources.

In the logic of Anglo-American and Zionist policy makers, the chaos, terrorism and insecurity in the Middle East, which is primarily caused by foreign military occupation, provides a pretext for the presence of occupation forces for the foreseeable future, something global planners have long desired. The U.S.-led occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq resemble the Israeli occupation of Palestine. As Israel's brutal aggression against Palestinians inevitably produces terror attacks in Israel, the U.S. occupation creates fertile ground for the growth of "anti-American" and "anti-democratic" terrorism. This, in turn, provides an excuse for the continued presence of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq - and throughout the region.

The recent publication of photographs of Iraqi detainees being abused and tortured by U.S. military personnel only fuels hatred for the occupation across the Middle East. This is well understood and appreciated by the "neo-conservative" Zionist policy makers in Washington, London, New York, and Tel Aviv. Today, life in Iraq is actually more dangerous and less secure than it was under the reign of Saddam Hussein. Scarcely a day goes by in Iraq in which lives of innocent Iraqis and U.S. service personnel are not destroyed by terror bombs.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the "war on terror" has changed the face of America. Glaring double standards and blind spots, however, leave the nation vulnerable and raise serious questions about the true goals of the "war on terror." For example, while wealthy, law abiding European visitors are subjected to extreme and embarrassing scrutiny, the border with Mexico remains as unchecked and porous as ever. Thousands of impoverished and uneducated immigrants cross the southern border illegally every month. On the other hand, the U.S. administration recently applied punitive sanctions against Syria because it said Damascus was not doing enough to prevent illegal border crossings into Iraq. It would seem the U.S. government is more concerned about protecting the borders of Iraq than those of the United States.

Another gaping hole in the domestic "war on terror" was revealed by the bizarre indifference of federal law enforcement to recent criminal activity by Israeli military personnel in the proximity of a number of critical U.S. nuclear facilities. While federal law enforcement authorities warn of a major terrorist attack in the United States, Israeli criminal activity in extremely sensitive areas is allowed to pass unchecked - and uninvestigated. Israeli military personnel run rampant across the United States violating the law with impunity. Since 9-11 there have been dozens of Israeli intelligence teams posing as "movers" and "art students" apprehended by local authorities only to be turned over to federal immigration officials and quickly released or deported. These Israeli military teams, often arrested in the vicinity of sensitive military or nuclear sites, represent a glaring blind spot in the "war on terror."

Two recent incidents in the southeastern United States reveal how Israeli military personnel are allowed to violate U.S. laws and operate within the country in ways which would never be tolerated of citizens from any other nation. The first incident occurred in the proximity of several nuclear facilities in Erwin, Tennessee, including the Nuclear Fuel Services plant. Nuclear Fuel Services is a company that provides fuel for nuclear submarines and processes spent nuclear materials. This is precisely the kind of radioactive material that is used in a so-called "dirty bomb," which senior law enforcement officials are warning that terrorists intend to use in the United States.

But who are these terrorists? Are Israeli intelligence agents planning another terrorist attack in the United States? A recent incident with Israeli intelligence agents occurred on Saturday afternoon, May 8, when Unicoi County (Tenn.) Sheriff Kent Harris spotted a rental truck speeding on former U.S. Highway 23, a lightly traveled highway near the North Carolina state line. Two young Israeli men in the rented moving truck evaded Harris in a high speed chase for three miles. During the chase the Israelis threw a bottle containing a mysterious fluid from the truck, an act they later denied. The vial contained an unknown substance, which appeared to be some kind of accelerant because it became warm when it was shaken, according to Harris. The purpose of the mysterious fluid has not yet been explained.

"They were driving recklessly and at a high rate of speed down an old highway that nobody uses anymore," Harris told independent journalist Dan Hopsicker. "I was really concerned because the driver would not stop after I flashed my headlights for nearly three miles. He was weaving back and forth, and I was wondering what a large truck was doing on a two-lane highway instead of the much-faster I-26 interstate."

"They ignored my blue lights for two and one half miles and they were traveling 20 miles an hour over posted speed limits," the sheriff said. Asked if it was possible that the Israelis were unaware they were being pursued, the sheriff said: "Oh no, he had to see me. The siren was going. I could see him in the mirror looking back at me."

Two young Israelis, Shmuel Dahan and Almaliach Naor were taken into custody. In the wallet of 23-year old Dahan, an Israeli soldier based in Miami Beach, police discovered a "Learn to Fly in Florida" business card. Israeli men serve in the military until age 55. "I got a sick feeling when I saw it," Harris told the Associated Press, expressing concern about the proximity of the nearby Nuclear Fuel Services plant. "It's the nation's sole provider of fuel for the Navy's nuclear subs," he said.

"They were just three miles from where, if you get off at exit 15, off I-26, you're just a half-mile from all the nuclear plants," he said. "There's Nuclear Fuel Services, which is a privately-owned company. Studdwick, another privately-owned company. And they're building a third one now."

The Israelis' truck tested positive for drugs, Hopsicker reported. "While the FBI dismissed the finding as a 'false positive,'" Hopsicker wrote, "local law enforcement regards the test as highly accurate." Harris contacted the FBI, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other local authorities to investigate the situation.

The sheriff's investigation, halted by the involvement of the FBI, revealed that the Israelis had just visited a remote storage facility owned by an unlisted "Salvatore Annone" of New Jersey, who Hopsicker reported, recently bought the Mars Hill, North Carolina storage company. "The truck," according to the AP, "was rented from a Ryder office in Mars Hills, N.C., and was being held in the county garage pending an FBI investigation, officials said."

The case is full of "anomalies," Hopsicker wrote. Shmuel Dahan, for example, listed his address in swanky Miami Beach, and has more than $12,000 in his personal bank account. "That sort of caught my attention," said the sheriff. "We're not overreacting," Harris said. "We have a responsibility to protect the citizens of Unicoi County and that's what I'm going to do at any cost. I'd rather overreact, if that's what you call it, than be sorry later."

The "Learn to Fly in Florida" business card belongs to another Israeli named Nissan Giat. Giat is an "Israeli military veteran," according to Hopsicker, and a free-lance flight instructor in the Miami area, working out of the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. Asked about Dahan and Naor, Giat told Hopsicker: "These guys aren't terrorists; they belong to the Israeli military." The two Israeli soldiers, however, were carrying false identification cards. Dahan had a false Florida driver's license and Naor had a fake identification card.

Dahan was charged with reckless driving, littering, false identification and evading arrest. Naor was charged with false identification and evading arrest. Police said the Israelis were being investigated by the FBI. I asked Special Agent Gary Kidder of the Knoxville field office about the FBI's role in the investigation. Kidder said, "Your premise is all wrong. An FBI investigation was never opened. The case was never turned over to the FBI." The only charges brought against the two Israelis, Kidder said, were immigration charges. The two were then quickly released from government custody after a judge in Erwin, (Tenn.) suspended a 30-day sentence and turned them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a bureau within the Department of Homeland Security.

Immigration officials had said Dahan and Naor would be subject to immediate deportation, yet despite convictions for evading arrest and working illegally on tourist visas, the Israelis were soon released and back at Summit Moving Van Lines in Miami, according to Hopsicker. The spokesmen at the Washington office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement were unable to answer any questions about the status of these two Israelis.

A second team of Israeli military agents posing as "movers" tried to enter the U.S. Naval Submarine Base at Kings Bay, Georgia on May 21. When an inspection of their rented moving truck revealed evidence of explosives, the base, home to 8 Trident submarines, was shut down for more than three hours, according to base spokesman Ed Buczek.

When the two Israeli soldiers posing as movers tried to access the base without proper identification an inspection team was called out to check their rental truck. Dogs trained to detect explosives and drugs "hit on something in the cab of the truck," Buczek told me. The evidence of "potential explosives" led to an immediate lockdown of the base and the St. Mary's police department closed off the area around the base and called in a bomb squad. "Guards closed access to the base and notified the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service," Buczek said.

Buczek said the two were driving a Budget rental truck and were working for an Atlanta-based moving company called Advantage. Advantage Moving and Storage in Norcross, Georgia was blocking calls from unknown callers on May 26. Like hundreds of other "moving companies" in the United States, Advantage is probably Israeli-owned and operated.

It was a "textbook scenario" reaction to an obvious security threat to the base and national security, Buczek said. "We saw something wasn't right." When the Israeli intruders were turned over to federal officials, however, their criminal activity was handled with what can only be described as indifference. The fact that Israeli military agents operate moving companies across the United States is a security problem, which apparently does not concern the Department of Homeland Security. Israel's military foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, has a network of transportation and logistics companies that spans the United States.

Across the river from the site of the World Trade Center stands a massive 15-story windowless building, the Jersey City headquarters of Moishe's Moving and Storage. I interviewed several of the young Israeli men who work at Moishe's and learned that they were recruited in Israel and work in the United States illegally. The "war on terror" has apparently not affected Moishe's illegal practices, or any of the other Israeli-owned moving companies across America.

Israeli-owned "moving companies" have been involved in numerous cases of criminal activity across the country. One notable case was a company based in Weehawken, New Jersey, which was found to be an Israeli intelligence operation with prior knowledge of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Five of its agents were detained in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 after being caught filming and apparently celebrating the terror attacks on the World Trade Center. After being held and refusing to cooperate with government investigators the four were turned over to immigration authorities and deported to Israel. One of the five later spoke on Israeli television saying the "movers" with video cameras had been prepared to "document" the attacks.

Like some 60 other Israelis apprehended in the aftermath of 9-11, the two young Israeli movers who tried to access Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, Tamir D. Sason, 24, and Daniel Levy, 23, were simply turned over to federal immigration officers. Although the truck had tested positive for explosives and a thorough criminal investigation should have been conducted, the two were simply turned over to immigration authorities because one of them was carrying an expired passport. The two were reportedly being held for deportation.

I spoke with Marc Raimondi, spokesman at the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) in Washington. Raimondi said that both Sason and Levy "will be deported," although he did not know their current location or status. Raimondi said ICE had taken custody of the two individuals and simply checked their names against immigration and criminal data bases. Because nothing was found in the data bases, Raimondi said, their only crime was that they had worked illegally on visitor visas. There was no further investigation of their activities.

"Perhaps the conspiracy theory has merit," Raimondi said when asked why Israeli agents involved in criminal activities were simply being deported on visa violations. When asked if DHS was concerned about the network of Israeli-owned moving companies in the United States, some with proven ties to Israeli intelligence, Raimondi was unable to answer. He said he was unable to carry on the conversation and that the agency welcomes any information that could be helpful in the "war on terror."

Controlled Press Ignores Questions about 9-11

September 17, 2004

SOMERSET COUNTY, Pennsylvania - Three years after the events of 9-11, half of the residents of New York City believe U.S. leaders had foreknowledge and "consciously failed" to act to prevent the disasters, while two in three want a new investigation of the "still unanswered questions."

In the first survey of public opinion about allegations of U.S. government complicity and covering-up of the events of 9-11, a Zogby International poll found that fewer than two in five New Yorkers believe the official 9-11 Commission "answered all of the important questions about what actually happened on September 11th." One in two New York City residents say that senior government officials "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll of August 24-26, 2004. More than 66 percent called for a new investigation, by Congress or Elliot Spitzer, New York's Attorney General, to resolve the "still unanswered questions."

"I think these numbers show that most New Yorkers are now fed up with the silence, and that politicians trying to exploit 9-11 do so at their peril," W. David Kubiak, executive director of 911truth.org, one of the groups that commissioned the poll said. "The 9-11 case is not closed and New York's questions are not going away."

The New York Times, on the other hand, told puzzled readers in its lead editorial on September 11, 2004 that it's possible to know what happened on 9-11 "without knowing what happened."

"In the three years since 9-11, we've begun to understand that it's possible to know what happened without knowing what happened," the editorial began. "Some of what we need to know publicly has been provided by the report of the 9-11 commission. Other answers are lacking." 9-11 being "a central event in this nation's history," the editorial concluded: "It's important that we who live most immediately in its shadow press hard to learn everything that can be learned about that day and to make sure that nothing is allowed to fade into the world of the publicly unknowable."

The New York Times efforts, however, did not include sending a reporter to either of the two recent 9-11 conferences addressing the unanswered questions held on Broadway in downtown Manhattan. The first event, "The 9-11 Citizen's Commission: The Omissions Hearings," was held Sept. 9 at Symphony Space on Broadway. The six-hour conference was chaired by former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) and brought together panels of experts who presented new evidence and raised questions about the official version of events. The second event, "Confronting the Evidence: 9-11 and The Search for Truth," was held at the Manhattan Center Ballroom during the evening of Sept. 11.

Having participated in both conferences, I asked the New York Times, which says it should "press hard to learn everything that can be learned about that day," if they had covered the 9-11 conferences. The paper confirmed they had not covered either event.

While the Times carried 9-11 stories during the days leading up to the third anniversary, their reporting failed to ask critical questions. For example, in a Sept. 10 article entitled "Falling Bodies" the fate of more than 1,000 people trapped in the twin towers above the levels impacted by the planes is discussed without mentioning the possibility of rescue by helicopter - or the fact that the doors to the roof had been locked.

A CITIZEN'S EFFORTS

Both Manhattan events were sponsored by a well-heeled citizen named Jimmy Walter, who has dedicated one-tenth of his net worth to bring attention to the yet unanswered questions of 9-11.

Walter told me he is spending $250,000 to bring public attention to the official cover-up of 9-11. Walter said that he had only realized that something was seriously wrong with the government's version of events after having seeing Painful Questions, a book and video about 9-11, which was like "an epiphany," he said. Before that "epiphany," Walter said he had believed that 9-11 had been "a sin of omission; not commission."

"I know that explosives had been used," Walter said about the destruction of the twin towers. Told that the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith had attacked this writer for an article about eyewitness evidence of explosions in the towers immediately after 9-11, Walter said: "Mossad is in it up to their necks."

Walter, 57, described himself as a "Bush clone." The son of a millionaire, Walter graduated cum laude from a prestigious prep school and the University of North Carolina. Like Bush, Walter said he served in the Air National Guard in Florida and found the regulation that allowed him to skip out the last two years. After bouts of cocaine and alcohol abuse, Walter said he "found the truth."

"I want to do something significant," Walter said. And bringing public attention to the unanswered questions about 9-11 is the best way to do that, he said. Walter recently purchased full-page ads in Reader's Digest, Business Week, INC., and New Yorker.

When 9-11 "activist" and conference "advisor" Nicolas Levis tried to steer the second conference away from discussion of the evidence, security guards removed a hysterical Levis from the theatre. I was then asked to join the second panel, which discussed the physical evidence, with author Webster G. Tarpley and engineer Jeff King. Both Tarpley and King agree that the towers were demolished in a crime that employed both conventional and exotic technologies.

I then traveled to Somerset County to look into some of the questions surrounding United Airlines Flight 93, which allegedly turned over and crashed in a refilled strip mine between Lambertsville and Shanksville, taking 44 lives with it. Many local residents believe that the plane was shot down, which they say would explain why parts of the plane and its contents were found strewn over a large area.

One question is what happened to the physical wreckage of the plane? "There was no plane," Ernie Stull, mayor of Shanksville, told German television at the official "crash" site in March 2003:

"Yes. My sister and a good friend of mine were the first ones here," Stull said. "They were standing on a street corner in Shanksville talking. Their car was nearby, so they were the first here - and the fire department came. Everyone was puzzled, because the call had been that a plane had crashed. But there was no plane."

"They had been sent here because of a crash but there was no plane?" the reporter asked. "No. Nothing. Only this hole," Stull said pointing to a smoldering hole shaped like the corner of a square. When I spoke with Mayor Stull, he explained that he had personally visited the crash site, "a day or two later."

Nena Lensbouer, who had prepared lunch for the workers at the scrap yard overlooking the crash site was one of the first people to see the smoking crater. I spoke with Lensbouer at her home. She told me that the hole was only 5-6 feet deep and smaller than the 24-foot trailer in her front yard. She described hearing "an explosion like an atomic bomb" - not a crash.

Lensbouer called 911 and stayed on the line as she ran across the reclaimed land of the former strip mine to within 15 feet of the smoking crater. Lensbouer told me she did not see any evidence of a plane then or at any time during the duration of the excavation at the site, an effort that reportedly recovered 95 percent of the plane and 10 percent of the human remains.

While specific details vary, the explanation for the disappearance of the plane is that the reclaimed land acted like a liquid and absorbed the aircraft, which is said to have impacted at between 450 and 600 mph. This explanation is also used to explain why there was only a brief explosion with one short-lived smoke cloud, not unlike a bomb blast. "I never saw that smoke," Paula Long, an eyewitness, told me. Long ran "immediately" after hearing the crash but did not see the cloud of smoke caught in the now famous photograph by Valencia McClatchey.

"It liquefied," Bob Leverknight, an active member of the Air National Guard and correspondent with Somerset's Daily American, told me about how the wreck and much of the fuel disappeared. One of the massive engines, Leverknight said, however, "bounced off the ground" and was found in the woods. It has been reported that a wing and engine were found more than one mile from the crash site.

Jim Svonavec, whose company worked at the site and provided excavation equipment, told me that the recovery of the engine "at least 1,800 feet into the woods," was done solely by FBI agents using his equipment.

Was Flight 93 Shot Down?

September 18, 2004

After spending a week in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 went down, I can say that most people there believe it was. It should be noted that this rural part of southwestern Pennsylvania is a Republican stronghold. The truth behind what happened to United Airlines Flight 93 is not a partisan issue; it's a matter of finding the truth.

It is clear that the laws of physics do not apply to the official version of events from 9-11. I've seen that before, for example in the final report of the "Estonia" catastrophe which took the lives of 852 people in September 1994 and in the TWA Flight 800, which certainly appears to have been shot down. If Flight 93 was shot down, it would explain why one wing and engine were found more than a mile away and how 6 trash bags full of mail were found in Indian Lake, more than a mile from the crash site. This would also explain why the plane was flying upside-down, or very close to that.

Eyewitnesses told me that they heard the plane gun its engines three times, as if trying to regain altitude. With one wing missing, however, that effort was doomed to fail. This would also explain why the U.S. government was so quick to call the 40 passengers on this plane heroes. Perhaps a better word is martyrs; martyred by the state and its corrupt military. And lastly, this could explain why the smoke cloud from the crash site was so small and short-lived. Plane crashes are usually attended by huge fuel fires with huge clouds of black smoke pouring into the sky.

Eyewitnesses to the "crash" of Flight 93 report having heard a massive explosion - not a crash of a plane into the soft reclaimed soil of a former strip mine. Nena Lensbouer, who had prepared lunch for the workers at the scrap yard overlooking the crash site, was the first person to go up to the smoking crater. Lensbouer told me that the hole was five to six feet deep and smaller than the 24-foot trailer in her front yard. She described hearing "an explosion, like an atomic bomb -- not a crash," she said.

A photograph taken after the crash shows what more closely resembles the smoke cloud from a 500-pound bomb than it does a plane crashing with two-thirds of its fuel still on board.

The ground liquefied, according to the official explanation, and the plane and its contents "buried itself" into the soft ground, but it left this explosive-like smoke cloud. "It [the ground] liquefied," Bob Leverknight, an active member of the Air National Guard and correspondent with Somerset's Daily American, told me about how the wreck and much of the fuel supposedly disappeared. One of the plane's massive engines, Leverknight said, however, bounced off the ground and was found in the woods. Asked what had caused the smoke cloud seen in Val McClatchey's photo, Leverknight said, "Dirt, combustibles, and the trees." This answer seems baffling.

Eyewitnesses report hearing a huge explosion, having seen a huge mushroom cloud of flame, and the smoke cloud that resulted from that explosion resembles a bomb blast more than it does the crash of a plane loaded with jet fuel.

Susan Mcelwain, an eyewitness who saw a military plane over Shanksville before the "crash", spoke to Richard Wallace of The Mirror (UK), whose article from 2002 provides interesting information not reported in the U.S. media:

The unmarked military-style jet swooped down at high speed through the valley, twice circled the smouldering black scar where Flight 93 had careered into the ground just seconds earlier and then hurtled off over the horizon.

At least six eyewitnesses saw the mysterious aircraft on the morning of September 11 last year. But the U.S. authorities deny it ever existed.

What was the white jet doing there and why won't they admit to its presence? Why did other witnesses see smoke and flames trailing from Flight 93 as it fell from the sky, indicating a possible explosion aboard?

Susan Mcelwain, 51, who lives two miles from the site, knows what she saw - the white plane rocketed directly over her head.

"It came right over me, I reckon just 40 or 50 ft. above my mini-van," she recalled. "It was so low I ducked instinctively. It was travelling real fast, but hardly made any sound.

"Then it disappeared behind some trees. A few seconds later I heard this great explosion and saw this fireball rise up over the trees, so I figured the jet had crashed. The ground really shook. So I dialled 911 and told them what happened.

"I'd heard nothing about the other attacks and it was only when I got home and saw the TV that I realised it wasn't the white jet, but Flight 93.

I didn't think much more about it until the authorities started to say there had been no other plane. The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.

"There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.

"It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side. I haven't found one like it on the internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around.

"Then they changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000 ft up.

"But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40ft above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here did."

As the Mirror also reported: "Light debris was also found eight miles away in New Baltimore. A section of engine weighing a ton was located 2,000 yards - over a mile - from the crash site. Theorists point out a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile attacks the hottest part of aircraft - the engine.

"The authorities say the impact bounced it there. But the few pieces of surviving fuselage, local coroner Wallace Miller told us, were "no bigger than a carrier bag".

"Nearly all the passengers were reduced to charcoal on impact and the largest piece of human tissue found was a section of spine eight inches long," Richard Wallace reported from what Wallace Miller said. How were the passengers "reduced to charcoal on impact?"

One of the local residents told me that his biggest question is: "How did 6 bags of mail wind up in Indian Lake, a mile from the crash site?" The wing and engine found more than a mile from the crash site and the mail found at Indian Lake suggest that the plane was shot down, while eyewitness testimony and evidence from the crash site suggest explosives accompanied the crash.

Was 9-11 an Inside Job?

September 29, 2004

Three years ago, in the aftermath of 9-11, I reported that eyewitnesses had seen and heard officially unexplained explosions in the World Trade Center buildings before and during their collapses. Van Romero, an explosives expert at New Mexico Tech, told the Albuquerque Journal on 9-11: "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The collapse was "too methodical to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures," Romero said.

However, for no apparent reason, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) attacked me and a newspaper that published my articles for publishing evidence of explosions at the World Trade Center. Why would an organization ostensibly dedicated to defending civil rights and Jews find fault with an article about explosions at the WTC? Three months after 9-11, the ADL accused American Free Press of using the 9-11 attacks "as grist for its mill."

"Its Oct. 29, 2001 issue," the ADL wrote, "includes an article by Christopher Bollyn titled, ‘Some Survivors Say Bombs Exploded Inside WTC,' in which Bollyn suggests that the ‘mainstream media' is ignoring ‘eyewitness accounts of bombs that exploded inside the World Trade Center before the collapse of the twin towers.'" Yet today, in spite of evidence that explosives and missiles were employed to demolish the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, the controlled press continues to avoid this subject.

During a Sept. 11 memorial service at St. Paul's Chapel across the street from the WTC, the priest described what he heard as the towers were collapsing: "Boom, boom, boom," the priest recalled, "the sound of the floors collapsing." However, the sounds described by the priest and New York City firefighters could more likely be explained as explosives demolishing the central support columns rather than 110 concrete floors collapsing at the rate of 10 per second.

Photographs and videos provide evidence that explosives in the towers caused the collapse of the three WTC buildings owned or leased by Larry Silverstein: the twin towers and WTC7, which was admittedly "pulled" deliberately.

"Cognitive dissonance," by Walter Chukwu of 911uncovered.com says, is "the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information." This Chukwu says, prevents people from accepting evidence "that the U.S. government carried out the 9-11 attacks."

Jim Marrs, author of Inside Job: Unmasking the 9-11 Conspiracies, is not affected by cognitive dissonance. Compiling information from numerous sources, Marrs builds the case that 9-11 was an "inside job." His work contains an analysis of the U.S. military's failure to intercept the four "hijacked" planes, questions the relatives' group wants President George W. Bush to answer, as well as a draft of 9-11 widow Ellen Mariani's Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization lawsuit against President Bush and other high government officials.

Marrs presents six arguments that disprove the official version of a fire-induced gravity collapse and indicate that explosives in the towers' cores snipped the 47 central support columns, bringing the towers down. First, the towers' cores were obliterated. No gravity collapse scenario can explain how the massive central box columns, with 4-inch-thick steel walls were cut. The powerful explosives required to demolish these central support columns would explain the pulverization of concrete and the enormous pressure, which threw debris and girders hundreds of feet from the towers.

The pulverization of concrete cannot be explained in the gravity collapse scenario. More than 100 times the towers' gravitational potential energy would be required to pulverize the concrete. Where did that energy come from? Steel beans were ejected 500 feet sideways. "The downward forces of a gravity collapse cannot account for the energetic lateral ejection of pieces," 9-11 researchers Jim Hoffman wrote.

Videos and photographs show explosions in the towers occurring well below the level of the collapse. Energetic dust ejections are seen while the top of the South Tower is slightly tipping. There is "no known source of the dense powder in these clouds of ejected dust," Marrs says. The tops of the towers mushroomed into thick dust clouds much larger than the original volumes of the buildings. "Without the addition of large sources of pressure beyond the collapse itself," Hoffman says, "the falling building and its debris should have occupied about the same volume as the intact building." That is, after all, what was observed when the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed neatly into its basement, with absolutely no lateral projections, at about 5:20 p.m.

That the towers fell at the rate of free fall defies the laws of physics. The cold and undamaged parts of the towers failed to slow the collapses. This indicates that resistance to the downward acceleration of the towers had been eliminated. Evidence that the central support columns had been cut prior to the collapse, which I reported in October 2001, can be seen in videos where powerful bursts of dust are seen being ejected from the towers well below the level of the collapse. At the time, I reported an eyewitness seeing a number of brief light sources being emitted from inside the building between floors 10 and 15 accompanied by "a crackling sound" before the tower collapsed. "Even a layman can see that the free-fall scenario based on fires in the building has almost no plausible explanation at this time," Marrs concludes.

During the recent "Confronting the Evidence" conference held in New York City, an individual who worked in the North Tower told me that prior to 9-11, elevator shafts were guarded by security guards while being "out of service" for "weeks and months." Because explosive charges would have to have been placed near the elevator shafts in the towers' cores, I am investigating contractors who had access to the towers in the year prior to 9-11.

MAJOR DEMOLITION

Two demolition companies, both of which have numerous branch companies, had been operating around the WTC and Pentagon sites: LVI Services, a New York-based asbestos abatement and demolition company headed by Burton T. Fried, and Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix, Md., headed by Mark Loizeaux.

On Sept. 13, 2001, Engineering New-Record (ENR), a national weekly for the construction industry, reported: "LVI Services Inc, New York City, which has done extensive asbestos abatement work in the towers in the past, is involved in similar work now as well as other cleanup efforts."

I asked LVI's president Fried about the work his company did in the towers prior to 9-11. "We did not do it," Fried said. "It was a company called AASI, but they went out of business. Asked abut the evidence that the twin towers and WTC 7 were destroyed by demolition charges, Fried replied, "No comment." Requests to ENR and the Port Authority regarding LVI's alleged work in the towers have so far gone unanswered.

LVI has worked with the Department of Energy and uses an asbestos-digesting product developed by the Brookhaven National Laboratory and W.R Grace & Co. I inquired at the Las Vegas office of LVI Environmental of Nevada Inc. and was told, "We don't speak to the press." LVI's Las Vegas office is headed by Joe Catania, political director of the Nevada Republican Party.

Did 9-11 Planes Fire Incendiary Missiles?

September 30, 2004

Did the planes that struck the World Trade Center fire incendiary/high-explosive missiles before they struck? This is an important question and key to understanding the whole WTC plot.

Planes that hit buildings do not always result in tremendous fires and explosions. When a small plane hit the Pirelli Tower in Milano, shortly after 9-11, there was very little damage to the tower. This was also the case when a 10-ton U.S. Army B-25 bomber hit the Empire State Building in 1945. That crash killed 14 (11 office workers and the three crewmen) and injured 26 others. The integrity of the Empire State Building was not affected, however, and the cost of the damage was $1 million.

The WTC plot, on the other hand, required massive explosions to accompany the crash of the planes in order to provide the logical pretext for the planned demolition which followed. The explosions that occurred when planes said to be UAL 175 and AA 11 hit the twin towers were apparently caused by the missiles that they fired immediately before impacting the towers. The explosions were also required to destroy the evidence of what it was that hit the towers. The plotters could not allow any debris from the planes to survive the crash and collapse scenario they had planned. The collapse scenario was crucial to the plot and without a massive explosion there would be nothing that would explain what caused the towers to collapse.

Video Indicates Planes Were Not Passenger Jets

October 7, 2004

Despite a media blackout by the controlled press of all information that contradicts the official version, there is a growing number of Americans who have come to the realization that the events of 9-11 were an "inside job." Supported by evidence brought forth by independent researchers in the alternative media, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the "fairy tale" quality of the official explanation of 9-11.

"It is clear that whoever was behind the attacks had information, if not help, from inside the government," Jim Marrs wrote in his recently published book Inside Job. "The totality of the information available today can only lead to two inescapable conclusions," Marrs wrote, "either the highest leadership of the United States is composed of imbeciles and incompetent blunderers or they are criminally negligent accessories to the crimes, if not worse."

The questions raised by the evidence bring only more questions. "The greatest of these questions concerns what the American people intend to do about all this," Marrs wrote. "Will they continue to be led by corporate mass media that deceive by omission?"

A MILITARY OPERATION

Examination of the videos of the planes striking the twin towers in slow motion suggests that the kamikaze attacks were a military operation. Careful analysis of the video footage indicates that the planes appear to be military aircraft with missile pods attached to their undersides from which incendiary missiles were fired immediately before plunging into the buildings. The video evidence is readily available to most Americans and is found in the images broadcast by the news networks on 9-11. Although the mainstream media has had these images since 9-11, it has failed to discuss their significance.

The photographs from the Pentagon and the World Trade Center are analyzed in a recently released video entitled 9-11: In Plane Site, produced by Dave vonKleist of the radio program The Power Hour based in Versailles, Mo. While the photographs from the Pentagon indicate something much smaller and more explosive than a Boeing passenger jet crashed on 9-11, the public has not seen any photos of the passenger plane that allegedly hit the building. The vonKleist video of the Pentagon analyzes images taken shortly after the attack, before the collapse of the upper floors. These photos reveal a 16-foot hole into which a Boeing 757, with a 125-foot wingspan and two jet engines is said to have disappeared leaving no visible debris.

The most compelling images from the vonKleist video are of the plane that is said to be United Airlines (UA) Flight 175 as it crashes into the South Tower. These photographs, taken from four different angles, suggest that the plane is not a Boeing 767-200 but rather a longer Boeing 767-300 military tanker with a missile pod attached to its underside between the wings. This evidence could support the theory that UA 175 and AA 11 landed at Stewart International Airport/Air Force Base, where they crossed as they approached New York City, and that weaponized drones replaced them and continued their flights to the twin towers.

As television cameras broadcast live images, millions of viewers watched the second plane strike the South Tower at about 9:03 a.m. The second plane is said to be UA 175, hijacked by Arab terrorists with box cutters. The video images, however, do not support this version. As vonKleist's video makes clear, there are a number of anomalies, which indicate that the plane that struck the South Tower was not a passenger jet. These images can be seen on videos of the WTC attacks, such as CNN's America Remembers. In this DVD, the crash of the first plane is at 3' 30" and the second at 7' 35." A slow motion viewing of these images will reveal these anomalies.

THE MISSILE POD

The first anomaly is seen as the plane banks to the left before striking the South Tower. Mounted on the underside of the plane, between the wings, a cylindrical object can be seen. This object, seen in at least four different videos, is described as a missile pod. An expert examination of the video images has concluded that the object seen on the plane's underside is a three-dimensional object. I spoke with a former pilot with United Airlines who has flown the Boeing 767-200, which was UA 175 on 9-11. He said the cylindrical object is not a normal part of the aircraft. The official version, he added, is a "fairy tale" and "pure Hollywood."

THE FLASH

Slow motion viewing reveals that immediately before plunging into the tower, the pod on the bottom of the plane releases a white object that enters the building with a white flash immediately before the nose of the plane pierces the facade. The flash is reflected on the plane's fuselage indicating it is a separate event. A similar flash is seen in the video of the plane striking the North Tower. In this case the flash occurs before the plane meets its own shadow indicating the flash occurred before the plane hit.

The flashes are thought to be evidence that the planes were military drones that carried incendiary high-explosive missiles to cause the huge explosions. The massive explosions were intended to destroy evidence of the planes and create the spectacle and logical pretext for the demolition of the towers that followed.

BOOM PORT?

There are other indications that the plane was not UA 175. A hole is seen on the underside of the plane near the tail. As vonKleist says, this appears to be the boom port for the refueling line of a Boeing 767 military tanker. VonKleist said that two independent sources had identified one of the pieces of debris from the plane that hit the South Tower (clearly seen in the video) as a "static line roller," a piece of a tension roller that would be found on a tanker but not on a passenger jet.

Eyewitnesses, including a reporter from Fox News, who saw the planes, reported having seen a windowless plane that did not look like a commercial jet. The FOX reporter said the plane had a round blue logo painted near the front. I asked both United and American Airlines and the U.S. Air Force about the images. Jeffrey Green, a spokesman for United, refused to view the images and said that any suggestion that UA 175 did not hit the South Tower was "offensive."

"Neither I, nor any of my colleagues or UAL executives wishes to see the video," Green wrote. "I think you and I have discussed the events of 9-11 enough," Green added. "Please do not contact United Airlines again in the future." American Airlines had not yet received the video.

I asked the office of the Secretary of the Air Force, Dr. James Roche, about the video's allegations that military tankers were involved in the attack. Capt. Kristen Lesperance at the Secretary's office told me that any questions about the aircraft seen in the videos are "outside the Air Force's purview." Lesperance told me to contact the Dept. of Homeland Security. Darrin Kayser at Homeland Security said the department is focused on the future and questions about the attacks should be directed to the 9-11 Commission.

Earlier the commission's Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton said: "The focus of the commission will be on the future. We're not interested in trying to assess blame; we do not consider that part of the commission's responsibility."

Radiation Danger at Pentagon & Other Crash Sites

October 20, 2004

The recent crash of a Boeing 747 in Halifax, Canada, raises a number of questions about the use of depleted uranium (DU) in airplanes, public health concerns and the 9-11 attacks. When a Boeing 747 crashed and burned on takeoff at Halifax International Airport in Nova Scotia, Canada, on Oct. 14, an official accident investigator said the aircraft probably contained radioactive depleted uranium. Bill Fowler, an investigator with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said the plane was likely equipped with DU as counterweights in its wings and rudder.

"A 747 may contain as much as 1,500 kilograms [3,300 lbs.] of the material," the Canadian Press reported. It took 60 firefighters and 20 trucks about three hours to control the fire. Fowler said: "there is no threat or concern" about DU exposure to those working on the wreckage.

In 1988, American physicist Robert L. Parker wrote that in the worst-case scenario, the crash of a Boeing 747 could affect the health of 250,000 people through exposure to uranium oxide particles. "Extended tests by the Navy and NASA showed that the temperature of the fireball in a plane crash can reach 1,200 degrees Celsius. Such temperatures are high enough to cause very rapid oxidation of depleted uranium," he wrote.

"Large pieces of uranium will oxidize rapidly and will sustain slow combustion when heated in air to temperatures of about 500 degrees Celsius," Paul Lowenstein, technical director and vice-president of Nuclear Metals Inc., the company that has supplied DU to Boeing, wrote in a 1993 article.

Now, some researchers are turning to the large number of sick firefighters and workers from the World Trade Center site and reports of elevated radiation levels around the Pentagon after 9-11. They contend that the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft involved in the attacks may have also contained depleted uranium counterweights.

PENTAGON RADIATION LEVELS

Around the Pentagon there were reports of high radiation levels after 9-11. I have seen documentation that radiation levels in Alexandria and Leesburg, Va., were much higher than usual on 9-11 and persisted for at least one week afterward. In Alexandria, seven miles south of the burning Pentagon, a doctor with years of experience working with radiation issues found elevated radiation levels on 9-11 of 35 to 52 counts per minute (cpm) using a "Radalert 50" Geiger counter.

One week after 9-11, in Leesburg, 33 miles northwest of the Pentagon, soil readings taken in a residential neighborhood showed even higher readings of 75 to 83 cpm. "That's pretty high," Cindy Folkers of the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) told me. Folkers said 7 to 12 cpm is normal background radiation inside the NIRS building, and that outdoor readings of between 12 to 20 cpm are normal in Chevy Chase, Md., outside Washington.

The Radalert 50, Folkers said, is primarily a gamma ray detector and "detects only 7 percent of the beta radiation and even less of the alpha." This suggests that actual radiation levels may have been significantly higher than those detected by the doctor's Geiger counter. "The question is, why?" Folkers said.

If the radiation came from the explosion and fire at the Pentagon, it most likely did not come from a Boeing 757, which is the type of aircraft that allegedly hit the building. "Boeing has never used DU on either the 757 or the 767, and we no longer use it on the 747," Leslie M. Nichols, product spokesperson for Boeing's 767, told me. "Sometime ago, we switched to tungsten, because it is heavier, more readily available and more cost effective."

The cost effectiveness argument is debatable. A waste product of U.S. nuclear weapons and energy facilities, DU is reportedly provided by the Department of Energy to national and foreign armament companies free of charge. DU is used in a wide variety of missiles in the U.S. arsenal as an armor penetrator. It is also used in the bunker-buster bombs and cruise missiles. Because no photographic evidence of a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon is available to the public, 9-11 skeptics and independent researchers claim something else, such as a missile, struck the Pentagon.

A white flash, not unlike those seen in videos of the planes as they struck the twin towers, occurs when a DU penetrator hits a target. Photographs from the Pentagon reveal that large round holes were punched through six walls in the three outer rings. The outside wall is 24 inches thick with a six-inch limestone exterior, eight inches of brick and 10 inches of steel reinforced concrete; the other walls are 18 inches thick. The object that hit the Pentagon on 9-11 penetrated several feet of reinforced concrete, leaving holes with diameters between 11 and 16 feet.

Bill Bellinger, then head of the EPA's Radiation Program for Region III, which includes Virginia, told me he had received information of elevated radiation levels and contacted EPA officials at the Pentagon. "I was concerned about that," Bellinger said. "I didn't disregard it at all." Bellinger told me that he thought the radiation was from DU in the aircraft.

Bellinger, who was based in Philadelphia, did not personally visit the Pentagon site and said that EPA personnel at the site had not reported high levels of radioactivity. However, the EPA official who Bellinger said had worked at the Pentagon, Craig Conklin, now at FEMA, told me that he had not been involved at the site, "directly or indirectly." Workers and FEMA officials at the Pentagon were seen wearing special protective outfits and respirators. FEMA photos show the workers going through decontamination procedures.

Bellinger said that the Department of Defense was responsible for on-site safety procedures at the Pentagon. In New York, however, considerably less attention was paid to the health risks the burning rubble posed to workers at the WTC site. A recent screening done by Mount Sinai Hospital found that nearly three-quarters of the 1,138 first responders had experienced respiratory problems while working at Ground Zero, and half had respiratory ailments that persisted for an average of eight months afterward. "We were dumfounded by how many people were sick, and how sick they were, and how sick they still are," said Robin Herbert, co-director of the program.

Thomas Cahill, professor of physics and atmospheric sciences, analyzed the plumes from a station one mile north of the burning WTC rubble. "The small particles worried me the most," Cahill told me, referring to the sub-micron-size particles, which can pass through the filters of respirators. Cahill said the high levels of silicon, vanadium, nickel, and sulfuric acid concerned him. The fine concrete dust, he said, acted "like Drano" in the lungs of the workers, where it irritated and burned the wet membranes.

Until Dec. 15, the pile was so hot, a piece of paper would ignite on contact with the rubble, Cahill said. "You had the workers working on top of a huge incinerator in the rush to get Wall Street going again," Cahill said. "It was really dumb. Only 30 percent of the firefighters working at the site in October were wearing any protection at all," he said.

A class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 800 people who suffer health effects was filed against WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein and the companies that supervised the cleanup: AMEC, Bovis Lend Lease, Turner, and Tully Construction. The suit was filed on Sept. 10, the last day set by a federal three-year statute of limitations for lawsuits related to 9-11. "Under state labor law, employers have a duty to provide a safe place to work," lead attorney David Worby said. "They violated that duty. Everyone knew what was on the ground."

As many as 100,000 workers at Ground Zero and hundreds of thousands more people in the area were exposed to airborne toxins, Worby said. "If you expose a person to this amount of lead, cadmium, benzene, asbestos, and glass shards, they are going to be sick," he said. "More people could die from this than died on the day of 9-11."

AMEC Construction Management, a subsidiary of the British engineering firm AMEC, renovated Wedge One of the Pentagon before 9-11 and cleaned it up afterward. AMEC had also renovated Silverstein's WTC 7, which collapsed mysteriously on 9-11, and then headed the cleanup of the WTC site afterward. The AMEC construction firm is currently in the process of closing all its offices in the United States.

Were DU Missiles Used on 9-11?

October 23, 2004

The video, "911: In Plane Site," by Dave vonKleist, examines the video evidence and shows that there was a white flash occurred immediately before United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 struck the towers. In the case of the South Tower, the vonKleist video shows the underside of the plane, seen from four different cameras and angles, with a cylindrical pod and a mysterious white object being fired from the pod before the plane hits the tower. This object impacts the tower immediately before the nose of the plane creating a bright flash. A similar white flash can be seen in the video, made by the Naudet brothers, of Flight 11 crashing into the North Tower.

The white flashes are very similar to the flashes seen when depleted uranium (DU) penetrators strike their target. DU is a spontaneous pyrophoric material, i.e. it ignites in the air. If DU missiles struck the towers immediately before Flights 175 and 11 impacted, then what happened to the DU penetrators? One would expect that they traveled through the towers and carried on into the streets of New York or into other buildings. Unless they impacted sufficiently dense objects to stop them, they should have continued through the buildings, and be seen flying ahead of the flames and debris. After all, uranium is 1.7 times more dense than lead.

Several photos of the conflagration that occurred as the plane struck the South Tower show two objects passing through the South Tower, ahead of the flames. One of them clearly displays the characteristics of burning uranium. One of the objects is black and leaving a white smoke trail; the other is burning with a bright white flame and leaving a black trail. The color of the flame and the color of the oxides [smoke] are important. The color of the flame indicates the substance that is burning and its temperature. The bright white flame is indicative of a reactive metal, such as magnesium or uranium.

I contacted Marion Fulk, former staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, to ask about the photos. After studying the photos, I asked Fulk if the object in the photo could be uranium. "Yes," Fulk said, "It is possible." Asked if the black smoke could be uranium oxide, Fulk said, "Yes, it could be uranium oxide." Fulk went on to describe the "dirty" olive green, brown, and black colors of the 21 different phases of uranium oxide.

The gap between the burning object and the black smoke trail was explained by Leuren Moret, geo-scientist and radiation expert, who said that the gap is where the uranium gas and vapors are so hot they are still invisible. As the vapors cool, they condense into visible uranium oxides. Asked how the piece of uranium could be burning so hot, Moret explained that some of the kinetic energy from the uranium missile would be converted into heat. If this is a DU penetrator, it could explain Moret's claim that the World Trade Center rubble was radioactive.

Were DU missiles used to ignite the fuel in the airplanes to create the spectacular explosions that were used to explain the pre-planned demolition of the twin towers?

Citizen Grand Jury & Radioactivity at Pentagon

October 29, 2004

LOS ANGELES, California - A citizens' grand jury has voted to indict the highest officials of the U.S. government for complicity in the events of 9-11 after considering evidence presented by five researchers.

The 6-hour presentation, Solving the 9-11 Crime - A Citizens' Grand Jury, was organized by Lynn Pentz of www.911truthla.us and held at the Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles during the evening of Saturday, Oct. 23. After discussion of the legal basis for the grand jury it was decided to enlarge the original grand jury to 23 in order to comply with California law.

The grand jury heard five researchers: Webster Tarpley, Barbara Honegger, Don Paul, Jim Hoffman, and this writer, present evidence. Some of the photographic evidence that I presented to the citizen's grand jury had never been seen before.

The author speaking at the Citizens Grand Jury in Los Angeles

Jim Hoffman supported the government's version of events regarding the Pentagon attack arguing that because some eyewitnesses claim to have seen a 757 hit the building, any discussion of evidence that contradicts that version "discredits" independent 9-11 research as a whole. The naysayers notwithstanding, after hearing the researchers and viewing the evidence the jury voted to indict President George W. Bush and other high officials of a number of charges of complicity in the 9-11 attacks and other offenses related to actions taken by the administration in their "war on terror."

MYSTERIES AT THE PENTAGON

From the Pentagon, I showed photos of the extensive decontamination procedures that were carried out on workers at the site. The full body suits, respirators, disposable boots, and scrub downs seen at the Pentagon indicate that the Dept. of Defense, which supervised the work at the Pentagon, was aware of the danger of an unusual contaminant at the site, such as depleted uranium.

I also presented official FEMA photographs from the Pentagon showing the unexplained presence of pieces of a small jet engine, roughly three feet in diameter. Since these photographs were first published in my articles last year no one has proven that they are part of a Boeing 757, the kind of aircraft that supposedly hit the Pentagon. While some readers claimed that the small turbine wheel seen in the photo could have come from the auxiliary power unit (APU) in a 757, an engineer with the Arizona-based manufacturer of the APU confirmed to me that the piece was "no part of an APU."

The fact that the 3-foot turbine was found next to insulation and parts of the housing that match its diameter suggests that the part came from a small jet engine of similar size. This piece of evidence could prove that a jet engine with an opening diameter of between 3 and 4 feet struck the Pentagon. The opening diameter of a 757's jet engine is about 9 feet.

EVIDENCE OF A GLOBAL HAWK

When my articles about this mystery part were first published with photos of these unexplained pieces, more than one year ago, I raised the question whether they could be from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), such as the Global Hawk. Identifying the piece in the photo would prove what kind of aircraft hit the building.

The Global Hawk is a singe-engine drone that uses a Rolls Royce Allison engine hand-built in Indianapolis, Indiana. The AE3007H engine has a diameter of 43.5 inches. Because the Global Hawk is a surveillance drone, the engine is contained in a heavily insulated housing to be extremely quiet. This corresponds with eyewitness reports. I asked eyewitness Steve Riskus, who said he was within 100 feet of the aircraft, what he heard. Riskus said he "did not recall hearing anything." If a 757 or jet fighter flew at high speed 100 feet from an eyewitness, the sound would be deafening.

The fact that no evidence of a 757 has been seen at the Pentagon crash site, and the discovery of parts from a much smaller engine, strongly suggest that what struck the Pentagon was not a Boeing 757.

The extensive decontamination procedures followed at the Pentagon indicate concern that the site was contaminated by something like depleted uranium (DU). Boeing recently informed me that their 757 and 767 aircraft do not contain DU counter weights. So what was the reason for this concern?

DU MISSILES AT THE WTC?

With no evidence of a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon available to the public, some 9-11 researchers claim a DU tipped missile, launched by an armed UAV, like the Global Hawk, struck the Pentagon. The Global Hawk followed the missile into the building and was destroyed leaving behind only its most durable parts, such as the engine parts and parts of its landing gear.

Because DU is extremely dense, a wide variety of missiles in the U.S. arsenal are tipped with DU rods to penetrate the armored steel of military vehicles and buildings. Because uranium is a spontaneous pyrophoric material, it ignites in air and generates extremely intense heat when it strikes its target. This is what causes the bright flash seen when a DU missile impacts upon its target. The white flash seen in videos of the two planes striking the twin towers is exactly the kind of flash that occurs when a missile with a DU penetrator strikes. If DU penetrators caused the flashes seen on videos of the planes smashing into the towers, where did the uranium rods go?

I have located several photos that show a pyrophoric object burning white-hot passing through the initial explosion in the South Tower. This object, displays all the characteristics of a burning DU penetrator. The photo of the conflagration that occurred immediately after the crash of the plane into the South Tower shows two fast moving objects that passed through the tower far ahead of the inferno. One appears as a black dot leaving a trail of white smoke; the second appears to be a dark rod burning with a white flame followed by a trail of black smoke.

The second object displays the characteristics of a burning DU penetrator. I sent enlarged photos of the object to Marion Fulk, a retired chemical physicist from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and asked him if this object could be DU. "Yes, it is possible," Fulk said. Asked about the dark smoke trailing behind the nearly pure white flame, Fulk said, "It could be uranium oxide."

"Let's assume it is uranium," Fulk added. "It's burning near the surface and it's pretty hot." It is a small object with great mass and has huge momentum behind it, Fulk said. "It's way out ahead of the explosion and nothing stopped it."

If the object is a DU penetrator, that would explain its intense heat, radiation expert Leuren Moret said. The pyrophoric DU would have already been burning before it hit the tower. The burning uranium would have acted to ignite the fuel in the aircraft causing the tremendous explosions seen in both towers. As it passed through the building some of the penetrator's kinetic energy would have been converted to heat energy.

The difference between the orange colors of the flames coming from the explosion in the tower and the white flame of the small dense object are indicative of "a huge temperature difference," Moret said. The white flame coming off of the uranium suggests it is burning at a very high temperature although it is not possible to determine the exact temperature from the photograph, according to Fulk and Moret.

The gap between the burning object and its dark smoke trail is because the vapor coming off of the burning object is very hot and has to cool in order to condense and form the visible dark colored uranium oxides, Moret said.